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Page 6 [TRENDS I Monday, November 12
Campus violence: what we can do about it
Dana Getzinger almost laughed when she
woke up in her Dearing Courtyard condominium
with a pillow stuffed in her face. Surely it was a
joke: at 8 a.m. on a January Sunday after her
sorority's winter formal, her friends must have
I to play games with her.
i she pulled the pillow from her face,
I the man clutching it was no friend.
1 into her stomach a long, thin knife
I the back of her aorta, the main
vessel carrying blood from her heart to her
brain.
ion as I got (the pillow) off, I got a real
ch in my stomach," she said. "I turned
t and got in a good kick and scrambled
on the University. "Students are still
re off
| r responsibility when they're ofi
campuV' said Public Safety Director Asa
Boynton. He attended the reading of a bill in
Washington that requires 8,000 universities and
colleges to make.campus crime statistics
available to the public updn rcqtie*.
is "the i
The bill, referred to as Clery bill," is
named for Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University
freshman who was brutally murdered in her
residence hall on April 5, 1986. Her murderer,
Josoph Henry, a sophomore, entered the co-ed
hall through a propped outside door. He gagged,
raped, sodomized and strangled her, cut her
throat with a broken bottle and bit her on her
cheek and breasts.
Out of nearly 5,000 bills that went into the
hopper this 101st Congress, the Clery bill,
combined with another bill to become the
Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security
Act, is one of only about 200 that passed, said
Karen Baker, press secretary to Rep. Bill
Goodling (R-Pennsylvania), whom the Clerys
asked to write the bill.
The bill requires all colleges and universities
who receive federal aid to compile campus crime
statistics beginning September 1, 1991, and to
publish annual reports beginning September 1,
1992.
Schools must include in those statistics
crimes that occur in off-campus buildings used
for educational purposes or that involve their
recognized student organizations. Baker said.
Among other freedom of information
problems, the bill was designed to remedy the
fact that only 352 out of 8,000 postsecondary
institutions receiving federal student aid
voluntarily submit crime statistics for the FBI’s
Uniform Crime Report.
The University submits statistics to the
Georgia Crime Information Network and the
FBI is welcome to them, Boynton said.
Dana and another co-ed, who was raped at
Syracuse University, testified in March on
behalf of the Clery bill before the House
Education and Labor cqmmittee's Postsecondary
education subcommittee. The House and Senate
unanimously approved the bill in October.
"Dana Getzinger made a very big impression,
along with the woman from Syracuse," Baker
gymnast, Dana managed to
foot in the man's crotch while on her
left her bedroom, she still was
that she'd been stabbed.
once looked down," she said. "I i
my legs, but I never once wondered
air was thick — it had a color —
as in slow motion. Then everything
away and away and away until all I
was hear."
88 subbing of Dana Getzinger Is a
it didn't occur on campus, but it still
towns where a number of students live off-
campus in areas that aren't student-dominated,
and it has a history of crime. In the (
of the
area is a housing project surrounded by an- and
But the Clery bill doesn't hold schools
accounUble for crime that occurs off-campus.
The definition of the word "campus" was altered,
shrinking a school's responsibility for reporting
crime to its campus boundaries.
Baker said the provision that would have
included off-campus incidents had unrealistic
ramifications. "Basically, it covered anything
that happened to any student anywhere," she
said. "It would be difficult to collect that
i and to find out what's actually
; at that schooL"
i that receive federal student aid funds
t an annual crime statistics and
policies report to all current and prospective
students and employees upon request. The
reports will give statistics for the three most
recent school years on reported incidences of
murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault,
burglary and car theft Arrests for liquor law
and drug abuse violations and weapons
possession will also be included.
"It’s going to require some money," Boynton
said. "For instance, if 4,000 freshmen show up
for orientation, we could conceivably have to
give a copy of that to every freshman or every
family, and that doesn't include transfers or
upperclassmen."
The Clery bill also gives victims of campus
crime the right to know what happens to their
assailants. "If the person who committed the
crime faces disciplinary action at school, it
would enable the victim to know the results of
the disciplinary action," Baker said. "It's
important to these people psychologically to
know if they'll be seeing these people on
campus."
Proponents of safe campus legislation and
programs believe incidents like Dana's stabbing
and Jeanne Clery's murder are preventable. The
Getzingers, through their organization Safe
Campuses Now, are putting together a student
safety kit designed to give students the extra
seconds before an attack to save themselves and
call for help.
Slated to cost under $100, the kit will include
an array of battery-Operated door alarm devices,
a hand-held air horn to scare attackers and call
for help, and an optional tear gas dispenser that
resembles a small object like a ball-point pen.
The Dearing Street' neighborhood where
Dana was stabbed is like that of most college
Georgia House, a senior management major and
three year Dearing Courtyard resident.
Aimed at campuses nationwide, SCN brthe
Getzingars’ biggest project "We want Safe
Campuses Now to be a non-profit organization
with the capability of harnessing the
community," Jim Getzinger said.
SCN has two components: a non-profit side
and a revenue-producing side. The safety kits
will produce revenue, as will planned safety
courses. But SCN's non-profit activities will
require support from both campus and
community groups.
SCN’s first component will be a rating system
for buildings on and off campus. It will use a one-
to-ten scale based on annual inspections, with
one being the safest rating. The building's
surroundings also will factor into its rating
Dana and her father agree that getting the
ratings system rolling is their most daunting
task. "The hard task is doing it for the first
time," he said. "That's a monumental task, and
we’ll need a lot of help. Once it’s set up, updating
it's an easy task."
Boynton isn't fond of raring buildings. "I
wouldn't want to rate buildings in terms of
safety, but I do like to point out safety problems
to the people in charge of those buildings," he
said. "When they know what the conditions are,
they take the precautions."
Public Safety provides a sheet for students
looking at off-campus housing so they can
determine what kind of safety features they're
buying. Each safety feature Is assigned a point
value. "The object is to get the highest score you
can," he said. "If your score is low, you know it's
not very secure. We don't rate one apartment
complex over another." Items scored include
deadbolts, lighted parking lots and police
patrols.
Dana returned to the University less than
three months after the stabbing. She'll graduate
at the end of fall with a degree in
communications and has already begun
assembling SCN volunteers and planning the
Plaasa Sa* VIOLENCE. Page